


Greeting The Dead

by roseluu



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Post-World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 14:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16161047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseluu/pseuds/roseluu
Summary: What people know about Alfred F. Jones: Life follows him wherever he goes. It's not the same for Arthur Kirkland.





	Greeting The Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Scrap written in 2017.

Alfred F. Jones does not know this, but he meets Arthur Kirkland summer 1932 in London, England. They are on a musty train next to homeless drunkards and ragged businessman. Across from Alfred, a boy sits in a cotton sweater and smudged black Oxfords. What catches Alfred's eye are the boys scraped, scraggly hands, covered in oil and dirt and crusted blood. He’s slouched next to a haggard woman, who holds his hand, white-knuckled.

Alfred nudges his brother. “Look,” he says and gestures to the boy.

“What is it?” his brother whispers. His voice barely makes it over the roaring train tracks.

“Do you think he’s alright?”

The boy’s nose is pursed, crooked. It disappears into the older woman’s jacket, and he starts sniffling.

Alfred F. Jones does not know this, but he meets Arthur Kirkland far before he falls in love.

*

Autumn 1946. Alfred F. Jones is introduced to his brother’s friend-of-a-friend’s tailor’s son. The tailor’s wife passed away, and the family heirloom is left to an Englishman named Arthur Kirkland, who, the tailor tells him, is his daughter’s lover. Alfred spots Arthur Kirkland through the funeral home’s crowd swatting a hand at the tailor’s son, Francis, as he weeps into his shoulder.

Arthur Kirkland is a spindly wire of a man, all flat sides and sharp edges. His smile is thin as he yanks Francis off, and when he thinks no one is looking, his face pinches.

When he asks, Alfred is told Arthur Kirkland has two dead parents and a grandmother no one has seen for more than seven years. Arthur is polite, kind, handsome, a true gentleman, and has a future in literature. When he later asks Francis, he is told Arthur Kirkland is the spawn of the devil and will rip off your genitals if you so much as look at him the wrong way. He has a quick tongue, a boring sex life, and no one likes him.

The tailor pulls him aside, and it almost makes Alfred forget the somber air surrounding the house. Francis’ sobbing is distant now – maybe he had gotten a hold of himself – and Arthur Kirkland’s sharp face isn’t standing in his line of sight.

“Francis always has his ways with coping,” the tailor tells him. “This is his favorite.”

“Crying?” Alfred asks and holds his champagne closer to his chest. He leans his weight on his toes to glance above the murmuring crowd. He can’t find any stringy blond hair. “Or ruining Arthur Kirkland’s suit?”

“Ah, I’m sure he won’t mind.”

As far as Alfred can see, Arthur seems like the type of man who would.

“I’m sorry to cut this short, but if you would excuse me. I’d like to introduce myself.”

One of the tailor’s eyebrows rises. “Go ahead,” he says, then smiles. “But just remember, boy, he’s taken!”

Alfred laughs along with him before slipping through the crowd. Through the black suits and knee-length skirts, Arthur’s pale face stays still as people glide by. Arthur’s hands are knobby, Alfred notices, while he attempts to pry Francis off again. He isn’t that small. His shoulders are broad and he’s just about Alfred height, though it could be his hair, thick and winding in loose spirals over his forehead. Alfred greets him with a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, yet Arthur’s polite smile drops.

Still, Arthur says, “Thank you,” and takes the glass slowly.

Alfred is well-aware why Arthur’s angry, but so far, he hasn’t been castrated.

“Did you know her well?” he asks, waving a hand to the window. Outside, a coffin is carefully lowered into the soil. He hadn’t seen the woman until today, though she looked kind during her calling hours – as kind as a dead woman can look. He’s only here because his brother was fond of her.

Arthur doesn’t smile as he raises the drink to his lips. His throat bobs as he swallows, and his green eyes look much, much greener with the chandelier glinting off the wine glass. “I knew her well enough. She’s supposed be my mother-in-law.”

Francis, who’s looking strained against Arthur’s arm, bursts into tears again. Arthur says, “Oh, peace be quiet!”

Alfred can’t help but smile. “I heard you are engaged to Francis’ sister.” It’s more of a question, out-of-place.

“I’m not,” Arthur says and says nothing more. Francis is becoming louder, so Arthur drags him away.

*

Alfred spends most nights trudging around his mind next to a bottle of whiskey. Sleep evades him, and he thinks of his parents downtown, cleaning up the funeral home while he’s drunk alone in his house, lying his face on his newest manuscript to keep himself from vomiting. He should be happy – ecstatic even – but it’s all strange and quiet and makes him reach for another gulp from the bottle.

What people know about Alfred F. Jones: Life follows him wherever he goes.

(What people do not know about Arthur Kirkland: Death follows him wherever he goes.)

Alfred suspects he will see Arthur again. And he does. It’s much quieter this time for he and Matthew. John Lee dies from a collapsed lung caused by a bullet left lodged too long in his chest. Matthew wipes at his eyes for a bit. Francis cries like he’d lost his mother all over again. Alfred has no idea why Francis is here.

Arthur Kirkland’s hair is wilder than before. He still looks the same, has the same polite smile and green eyes and rigid spine. It has only been four months since Alfred had met him, but he feels like it’s the first time all over again. And the first time wasn’t entirely pleasant.

Alfred doesn’t greet him with a drink this time, but his lips are pulled back into a smile, the one Matthew says no one can’t help but like. Arthur Kirkland doesn’t say anything for many moments. He doesn’t smile, either.

“It’s you,” Arthur says.

He doesn’t expect that. Arthur smooths his hands over his suit.

“Yes, it’s me,” Alfred manages to say. “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Arthur says. This close, Alfred can see the crinkles edging his eyes. “I’m fancying you’re here because of your brother?”

“Uh, yes and no. We both fought alongside John. Good man.”

They both glance to the woman sobbing at the coffin. John left behind a wife and a daughter. His wife is pregnant with a second baby girl that will be born in two weeks. Alfred has not told anyone, but the bullet that killed John Lee was the one meant for his own chest, in the hands of a German’s automatic rifle.

Arthur eyes him. “You fought in the war?”

“Yes,” he says. “I was a sergeant.”

Arthur nods. “Well, have a good day.” And leaves.

Alfred realizes he’s never introduced himself.

*

“He writes novels,” Matthew tells him. “Mystery and romance.”

Alfred stops swirling his drink with a gnarled toothpick. “What?”

“He writes – ”

“No, no, I heard what you said.” He bursts into laughter, startling the table of women next to him. One of them glares, and he puts his hands up before banging them on the table. Matthew jumps. “You’re telling me _Arthur Kirkland_ writes _romance_ novels?”

Matthew wipes his mouth with his napkin, brows stitched together. “Um, yes. Is that hard to believe?”

“Of course, it is. That man looks like he wants to slaughter everyone! I guess I get mysteries. Are they about murder? Maybe their written confessions.”

“Alfred!”

“And how do you know this anyway?” He pinches his fork between his fingers before digging it into his spaghetti.

“Francis told me,” Matthew sighs. “These days he’s still having a hard time without his mother. I think he’s lonely.”

“Hm. Francis doesn’t strike me as a lonely man.”

“I think it gives him too much time.”

Alfred smiles and slurps a noodle from his fork. “Enough time to bother Arthur Kirkland, it seems. When I spoke to Francis, he didn’t seem fond of Arthur, even though Arthur’s supposed to be his sister’s fiancé. Hey, you know it isn’t true, right?”

Matthew hums, “They were never going to marry, Al. Who told you that?”

“The tailor.”

“I’ve heard he’s going looney. I’m not sure. And, besides, I’ve met Francis’ sister. There’s no way she and Arthur Kirkland would ever come within ten feet of each other. I think they’ve known each other too long.” Matthew pulls on a piece of his hair and frowns.

“It’s always the childhood friends,” Alfred says.

*

Spring 1947. Alfred bumps into Arthur on the train.

Arthur is a different man outside funerals. He doesn’t wear a fancy suit. (Suits, to him, mean itchy skin and sweaty feet. Crimping cuffs to his wrists and pulling on thin, cotton socks is meant for cold weather and funerals. As a child, he layered socks like blankets of skin, even in the summer.) Now, he’s wrapped in a brown sweater vest and slacks. His polished right shoe never ceases tapping.

Alfred takes it upon himself to settle in the seat next to him, pretending his arms aren’t sweating underneath his sleeves. He strains to keep the stack of four manuscripts in his lap. He’s already nervous, because he’d skipped several details in the newest recount of 1944, and he’s isn’t sure if his editor is going to let that slide or not.

Arthur doesn’t say a word. This close, he smells like cigarette smoke.

So, Alfred asks Arthur to accompany him for coffee.

*

Arthur, as it turns out, hates coffee.

“An Earl Grey, no sugar, with a lemon poppy-seed scone,” Arthur says to the waitress. He says the words like he owns them; to Alfred, in Arthur’s world, there is no such thing as a dictionary, or a thesaurus. Arthur has the words wrapped around his finger and twists them as much as he likes.

Then Arthur adds quickly, “No butter, please.”

This moment is winsome to Alfred.

“What do you even do?” Arthur inquires. “You’re hauling around stacks of paper.”

He drums his fingers against the table. “They’re my manuscripts.”

A broad brow raises. “You’re a writer?”

“Somewhat of. I write textbooks. History.” He pats the top of the stacks of paper, so thick it could be used as a stool. “I’m giving these to my editor today.”

“What part of history do you write about?”

He hums, “Whatever they ask me to.”

Arthur’s lips lift. “They ask you to? You must be quite talented.”

“Hardly. I’m just putting history into my own words.”

“People like it.” He reaches over and slaps his knuckles, ceasing his patterned drumming. “Peace be quiet. Do that again and I’m leaving.”

“Sorry, sorry.”

Arthur tells him he’s a writer, nothing more and nothing less. He soon mentions mystery, and how his own editor is bordering the habits of a Casanova. When the waitress returns with his coffee and Arthur’s scone and tea, Arthur cradles his cup like a flower.

*

Alfred is a born and bred pilot. His father has him soaking in biographies at three – behind his father’s back, he devours articles about Bessie Coleman and Harriet Quimby – and has him studying architecture and mechanics at five, scrubbing airplanes at fourteen in the corners of the airport (the owner is a colleague of his father’s). His friends around his small, conservative neighborhood in Michigan never get bored when Alfred folds them paper planes and sells lumped metal models for ten cents.

He dreams of being in the sky. He has always been a dreamer.

Alfred is enlisted three weeks before his eighteenth birthday. He is one of many that will swim ashore in France.

Matthew says because of this, the interest to study history at twenty-three years old, with no fall back job, blossoms. Matthew insists he hosts a twisted fascination of what happened, and what could have happened, and he’s stuck in a rebounding cycle of prolonged shell-shock. His mother says he’s always been one for war, and after being sent into one, unsure if he even has a chance of survival, he wants to know more. His father says it’s for some comfort.

He doesn’t know himself. Well, a part of him knows, but he’s sure it was dragged down in his boots when he saw the bullets peppering the bodies soiled in red water.

*

Summer 1947. He sees Arthur again when Matthew’s wife is found dead in an alleyway.

Julia, Matthew says, had gone out to the market around twelve-thirty. Matthew had expected she was planning something for her friend’s, Grace’s, birthday that Saturday, and he hadn’t given a thought when he returned from work and found the house empty.

Witnesses say they saw Julia greet Grace and leave her house fifteen minutes later. She was found dead four hours after in a wet alley two blocks away.

Alfred isn’t surprised. She was German.

Alfred doesn’t cry. Matthew cries, and so does Francis (Alfred still isn’t sure why Francis was there). Julia’s little brother doesn’t come, and he makes the right choice.

Arthur is wearing a black pressed suit. (Why is he here?)

“We must stop meeting like this,” Alfred says. He knows he looks a mess. He’d cried under his sheets the night before.

Arthur stares at Julia’s coffin, never glancing at her face, and says, “She was pregnant.”

Alfred says, “How about we go out for some tea.”

*

Autumn 1947. Arthur has made it clear that he doesn’t intend to be friends with Alfred. So, after meeting twice for tea, he thinks it fit to invite him for dinner with Matthew and Francis. Arthur expresses his gratitude to Matthew for finally ridding him of Francis; he spends most of his days on Matthew’s couch and bed, cooking his favorite dishes from his childhood in Paris and drinking Cabernet Sauvignon, his favorite wine. These are some of the very few things that get Matthew out of bed.

Arthur is an awful cook. He drowns the peas in vinegar, scorches the beans, and sprinkles too much salt on the potatoes. He leaves the celery out of the fridge too long and it’s quickly devoured by Matthew’s dog, who spits it up as if poisoned. It seems Arthur added something to the celery – only God knows what.

Alfred finds it strangely endearing. That is, until he almost burns his house down. Arthur, flustered, is a sight. Under scrutiny, he curses at them all. Alfred never expects to have an Englishman destroy his kitchen and threaten to set him on fire for worrying about it.

When Francis finishes dinner, they sit at the table exchanging stories, the wind coaxing Glenn Miller’s _American Patrol_ inside from Alfred’s neighbors (whom he’s never met) crackling radio. Arthur is silent while slicing his baked potato and taking small bites of sweet-tasting peas. Everything about this dinner is foreign. Living in small-town Michigan has taught Alfred many things, and one of them isn’t having a friend-of-a-friend’s tailor’s son, who sleeps on his brother’s sofa, make dinner for he and his sort-of friend, who also dislikes him (to a lesser degree, hopefully).

*

Arthur Kirkland is born in Manchester, England. He is born with a head full of wiry hair and a crooked nose. He is born on April 23, 1924 at seven pounds and six ounces, 7:24 a.m.

Alfred flips the photograph back over. It much have been taken hours after Arthur was born, wrapped in a wool blanket, eyes shut, and hands curled in his sleep.

“That was the day my mother died,” Arthur says.

Alfred loosens his hold of the picture. “During childbirth?”

Arthur sips his Earl Grey. This time, he’s added a teaspoon of sugar. “No. Afterwards. The sun went down and that was that.”

Alfred doesn’t apologize.

*

Autumn is torturous. Alfred has frequent nightmares. He finds drinking every bottle in his cabinet doesn’t quite subdue what runs through his head anymore. When he turns to working sober on his manuscripts, he mixes and matches, busies his fingers on the keys of letters until his joints ache. But in the end the matching is what he mixes, so he phones Arthur.

“How the hell did you get my number?” Arthur rasps. His voice is laced with sleep and grates in his throat.

“I asked Francis for it,” he says.

“That bloody frog. I ought to wring his neck.”

“You can do that later,” he says. “I was calling to ask how you were doing.”

“How I’m _doing_? It’s two in the morning!” He sounds on the verge of hanging up the phone.

“I was…” He fiddles with the card. On it, Arthur’s home line is written in scrawled handwriting. “I had a weird dream. Did you have one?”

Static fills the line. Arthur makes an indiscreet groaning noise. “You’re a strange man, Alfred. Strange.”

And weak.

And, sort-of, slightly, indescribably drawn to Arthur? Maybe.

*

Alfred doesn’t read the newspaper. No matter how uninformed he is, no matter how many newspapers are placed simply and money-hungry around him – in the streets, in shop windows, on his brooked front doorstep – he doesn’t read them. He doesn’t own a TV, either, and he doesn’t want one. He doesn’t watch sports, he doesn’t care about Jackie Robinson, or aid extension, or rallies. He doesn’t greet the neighbors about any of these things; he doesn’t greet the neighbors at all. He doesn’t want to hear any of it.

He likes his books over-due at the library and novels written under the name Arthur Kirkland.

Winter 1947. Matthew is bedridden with pneumonia. Alfred visits him with Arthur’s new novel, _The Downfall_. He catches pneumonia and infects Francis, who had been hiding downstairs, and accidentally breaks his typewriter when he returns home, drunk and sick, by knocking it off his desk. He finishes the book in bed.

For some reason, for hours, tears burn at his eyes.

*

December 31, 1947. Madeline and Benjamin Jones are killed in a car wreck. They are on their way to Matthew’s house to celebrate New Year’s. When they run a stop-light, a truck speeds at sixty miles per hour into the driver’s side, spiraling the car over a railing and into a seventeen-foot ditch. Benjamin is killed instantly, and Madeline is knocked unconscious when her head slams into the window. Seconds later, they hit the bottom and her neck snaps, killing her.

Matthew is restless when they don’t arrive up at five o’clock. He and Alfred drive until they find the police cars and the split railing, with their parents’ bodies in the arms of officers lowered into the ditch.

January 7, 1948. Arthur’s hair is, just slightly, trimmed. Two caskets are lowered into the ground, layered in petals of purple-blue forget-me-nots. Alfred doesn’t cry, but Arthur does.

*

Spring, nearing summer, 1948. Alfred doesn’t hear from Arthur until he calls to invite him over.

Alfred declines when he’s offered tea. Arthur speaks curtly, wears a tight white dress shirt rolled up to his elbows. His living room is thick with the scent of cleaner and bitter rubbing alcohol, and Alfred catches small hints of cigarette smoke as he plops down on the grey couch.

Arthur sits on the recliner next to him. His lips are thin.

The silence crawls up his back. “Do some cleaning recently?” he asks.

Arthur stands and clicks it on despite the open windows. The paisley curtains flutter, and the brisk wind pebbles goosebumps over Alfred’s arms.

Arthur says, “That’s what you have to say to me?”

He drums his fingers on the scratchy couch. “Well, you look like you’re regretting asking me here.”

Arthur’s lips suck thin even more. “My apologies, _Alfred_. Would you like some food, as well?”

He says no. Arthur sits back down. His hair has grown a tad longer, curtaining his ears, pushed up in ragged crimps over his forehead.

“Francis has been asking about you,” Alfred says. “He says you haven’t answered any of his calls.”

Arthur’s green – _very_ green – eyes roll. “Oh, please, spare me. I’d rather answer a phone call from you than that idiot.” He reaches over and smacks Alfred’s knuckles. “Peace be _quiet_.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Despite himself, laughter bubbles, and he strains to keep silent. “How have you been doing?”

“I’m doing fine,” Arthur says. “Published a new novel. My editor has eloped with a woman from the Highlands.”

Alfred moves his fingers to drum on the inside of his knee. “Sounds exciting. But how have you been doing?”

“I’ve just told you.” Arthur winds his fingers through his hair, pushes at his forehead. “I’m doing just fine. You aren’t listening to those blasted tales Francis goes on about, have you? He speaks of me like devil-spawm.”

“He’s not _that_ bad.” He’s genuine. Francis has been more anxious than bitter. “He’s just worried. You always answer your phone.”

“Well, that’s changed, hasn’t it?”

“It seems so.”

*

Spring 1950.

“You understand wherever I go, death comes with me, right?”

Alfred shakes his head. “I think death comes when death is meant to come. It isn’t some sort of fairytale magic.”

“And how do you know that?”

“I like to think of it as a mild conundrum. I’m here, aren’t I?”

*

Arthur Kirkland is born in Manchester, England on April 23, 1924. He is raised by his grandmother in the streets as a proper Englishman, even if they own next to nothing. His grandmother teaches him how to walk like a gentleman, steal like an expert thief. Pinkie up for respect, use words to scare others away. Politeness, manners, how to hide from the police. How to keep his hair out of his eyes, what sigils will give you good luck.

Arthur Kirkland’s grandmother is killed, and Arthur runs. He teaches himself how to read, steals biographies and classical literature from the library run down from the dreadful economy.

At the age of seventeen, Arthur Kirkland allows himself one friend, Eren: a middle-aged woman who lives next to a soggy dumpster, shrugged in a winter jacket and consuming scrapped rations to ease hunger pains. Arthur meets her one dark night, and they become friends that same night.

At the age of seventeen, Arthur watches Eren push what money she has into his palm. She tells him to run.

He is on the train to London when the world turns, his feet topple, and the power flickers off. Suddenly everything becomes still.

Nearby, he feels the ground shake from the Luftwaffe.

Arthur Kirkland feels as if he’s been cursed.

*

Winter 1948. Papers are signed; Alfred and Matthew Jones are the owners of _Foster’s Funeral Home_. They hire quickly. Honda Kiku, a short Japanese man who looks at Alfred’s nose rather than his eyes when speaking. He’s young, broke, and trained as a mortician by his elder brother, who died in the bombing of Nagasaki. Then the funeral director, Antonio (he refuses to give his last name), who needs a stable job to take care of his family (names are never given).

Arthur begins dating Arden Moore, a popular editor known for working with writers around Michigan. Alfred meets her when he invites Arthur over for dinner. Arden quotes George Orwell and Jane Austen and Shakespeare and chats Alfred’s head off until he’s unable to process any response. She’s blond, brown-eyed, and has a habit of taking Arthur’s hand into hers whenever she gets overly excited. It makes Alfred consume much more alcohol he normally would around strangers.

Arden loves politics. Alfred can’t say he’s fond of her.

After a dinner of Arden and Francis getting passionate over Voltaire, he and Arthur whispering about how, admittedly, strange this all is (Arthur’s shoulder stays against his, their thighs touch, and Alfred begins to drink even more), Alfred sends them home. Arthur pats his knuckles on the way out.

*

“Are you married?” Alfred asks.

Kiku takes his time to answer, carefully pulling up the torso of the body and slipping a sleeve over a limp arm. “Ah, no. I am not,” Kiku says, opening his mouth wide over his pronunciation. The way he speaks sort of reminds him of Arthur, but Kiku is almost always genuine with his words.

“No girlfriend?”

“No, no.”

Alfred kicks his heels against the wooden drawers underneath him and hums, “How do you know English?”

Kiku circles around the casket, shrugging to slide his suspender back onto his shoulder. “My brother taught me when I was young. Just basics. I still have trouble.”

“You’re pretty good.”

“Thank you, sir.” Kiku tugs the other sleeve onto the arm.

Alfred wracks his brain for something to fill the silence. “Why’d you move to America?”

Kiku glances at him. His ink-black hair obscures his face when he turns away. “It was a fast decision. I had enough money for a boat here.”

“That’s nice. Well, I can assure you I’ll do whatever I can to make you happy working here.”

Kiku’s eyes widen. He has dark eyes. If you look closely enough, they’re a dark brown, like wet bark, instead of black. “That is really kind of you to say, sir.”

“I’m glad you say so,” Alfred says, smiling. “Now, can you tell me who did that?”

Kiku asks. “Did what, sir?”

Alfred gestures to his arms, where dark purple bruises peek out of his sleeves in mottled finger-prints. Kiku snatches his hands to his chest, pulling the sleeves over his fine wrists.

Kiku says nothing. Alfred says nothing, too.

*

December 25, 1948. Alfred leaves a wrapped box on Arthur’s doorstep. He can’t bring himself to knock on the door.

*

He doesn’t hear from Arthur for seven months.

*

Alfred F. Jones is not a man who looks forward. He adapts, yes, but he is uncaring to the world around him, and knows it’s from the moment his heels hit the beach sand of Normandy. He wants things to change, to evolve – there wouldn’t be history to learn if it didn’t – but he doesn’t want to be in the middle of it. He doesn’t like it when women fawn over his smile and blonde hair and blue eyes and accent. He doesn’t like it when his editor sends back his work and demands he reword this and re-write that. He doesn’t like it when people are hurt because of him, taking a bullet to the chest, or trading his water-logged boots for dry ones, or his father shielding him from pilots’ deaths.

He wants people to grow up.

When he voices his thoughts to Matthew, Matthew calls him a hypocrite. He knows he is.

One of these times he wants someone to grow up: when Arthur knocks on his door after no word for seven months, not even an appearance at a funeral, with a thin smile that is just too thin.

Summer 1949. He wants Arthur Kirkland to grow up already.

(He knows he’s wrong.)

*

They go for tea. Arthur, with his thinned lips and thick hair, and Alfred at a loss.

The waitress brings Arthur Earl Grey, no sugar. Alfred snatches his cup of coffee, doused in creamer, out of the waitress’s hands. She scurries away. It’s nearly midnight, and she clearly wants to go home.

The silence is humming in Alfred’s ears again.

“I haven’t heard from you in a long while,” Alfred says.

Arthur thumbs the edge of his teacup. “I haven’t heard from you, either.”

“Sorry?”

“I thought you’d at least phone me after leaving a Christmas present on my doorstep.”

“I thought about it,” Alfred says, lightly, a little too honestly.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Nerves.”

Arthur takes another sip of his tea, clinking the cup on the table. His brows knit together, tight, irritated, and Alfred wonders if he’s finally going to lose the polite façade and just speak.

“Well, chap, I hope your nervous. As well as – ”

“Everyone is nervous around you, Arthur.” Arthur’s name rolls through his mouth, tightening around his tongue and rolling his jaw. It’s foreign, the way his name sounds when Alfred says it. Alfred does whatever he can to not say it.

Arthur stares down at his cup, and his shirt crinkles from his knee jouncing underneath the table. The radio rasps through the café, rattling on about European rations and genocide and political fortitude – everything Alfred does not want to hear.

Arthur doesn’t say anything. Alfred takes another sip of his coffee. “What happened?”

Arthur’s eyes stray to his face, reaching his eyes. “She’s up and left. Arden.”

“Why?”

“Everything was fine,” Arthur says. “Yet she wanted more. I couldn’t give her anything more.”

Arthur Kirkland: the handsome gentleman with the lolling accent and a way with words. With a bad attitude Alfred doesn’t mind and really green eyes Alfred also doesn’t mind. And, here he’s sees the moment Arthur Kirkland just stops.

The words flurry too quickly, taut in the air: “Well, she’s lost,” Alfred says. “It would’ve been different with anyone else.”

“Like you?”

The radio crackles, and Alfred watches Arthur swirl a spoon in his tea. Arthur’s resting his chin in his palm, and his sleeves are rolled again to his elbows, and he’s had his hair trimmed above his ears. Alfred feels his words hovering between them, until Arthur’s replaces them, drawing red strings and pressing buttons. Alfred’s head is becoming terribly loud.

Arthur’s waiting – waiting? (He can’t be waiting; Arthur would never let someone know he’s waiting).

Alfred resolves the haze of phrases, sentences, letters throbbing at the forefront of his mind with a breathy laugh. “I feel like I don’t quite make the cut.”

“Well,” Arthur says, startlingly fast, and still never wander. Under the dimmed golden lamp strung above, his eyes are still green, and his cheeks are cut, and his hand is still stirring his damned tea. “I suppose you fancy who you fancy.”

“Yes. No! I, um.” He’s worried his voice is cracking, and he’s looking around for the waitress. “It’s not that I don’t, um, fancy you. I just…I’m not…I don’t know.”

“How eloquent.”

Despite himself, despite this whole situation he’s dug himself a deep hole into, he can’t help but laugh. “Oh, my Lord! Oh, God! What the hell!” He’s isn’t sure how to put it any other way.

Arthur isn’t laughing, but his lips have softened. “Bugger. Francis was just talking about how much I fancied you. Which I don’t.”

Alfred laughs again.

*

It’s expected, really. Arthur Kirkland does not allow anyone too close, and he certainly does not fall in love. Alfred has the fleeting thought that, perhaps, he’s the one who needs to grow up, but casts it away, because he is a man who has, most definitely, tripped and fallen into something that is going to be the death of him.

*

Still summer, 1949. Power floods to Alfred’s head, and he’s in the hospital the next morning.

“What in the _hell_ did you think you were doing?”

This is what he wakes up to, on a stiff bed that smells like antiseptic and stale mints. He’s too high on morphine to even register his surroundings, and Matthew goes against the doctor’s orders and smacks him upside the head.

“You should see the other guys!” he cheers. He doesn’t really cheer, but, in that moment, he wants to.

“You got _stabbed_ , you idiot!” Matthew’s voice has never been able to reach a level above Alfred’s whispering, so he’s easy to ignore until he’s finished ranting.

“I found the guys giving Kiku a rough time,” he says. “So, I took them out.”

“No, you didn’t, Al. You punched one in the face and then got stabbed.”

“Well,” he slurs, “I wouldn’t worry about it. No need to be pissed.”

Matthew sighs, “Arthur is pissed.”

“Oh. Well, that’s different.”

*

Two nurses come around every morning, bustling through his room, pulling at his clothes and rolling him around the bed to stimulate the nerves above his hip. It’s lasts around two weeks with them dressing his wounds, popping pills down his throat, and Arthur and Matthew one-sidedly bickering over dinner.

When the nurses take their final leave from his recovery, Arthur volunteers to take care of him, for the funeral homes sake, and for Matthew’s.

Having Arthur around every day, all day, isn’t quite what he’d dreamed it’d be. Arthur gets him up at seven every morning, yanking off his sheets, ripping off his shirt, and changing his bandages without slowing pace, even when he’s wincing and hissing. He’s supposes it is his fault he’d ended up like this; he shouldn’t have tracked down three stupid teenagers that looked like they’d had their fair share of past fights. But still. Kiku is too nice for his own good, and Alfred quite likes him.

Arthur doesn’t cook. This is his way of getting Alfred out of bed, rather than hunching over the typewriter all day. They don’t talk much, either. Every time they do, Arthur gets frustrated with him muttering about war policies and fervently makes bitter Earl Grey in Alfred’s favorite coffee cup.

Kiku comes by and drops off homemade casserole, and it makes Alfred laugh so hard a few of his stitches bleed.

*

But there are moments. Moments that Alfred doesn’t forget until the day he dies. With Arthur, it’s angrier, the air thicker, more alive, around his home. He’d take angry over the page turning and dull clicking of his typewriter. Arthur reads and rereads Dickens and his manuscripts until early morning, and when Alfred wakes from the sand, he waddles into the living room in his socks and bandaged waist and sits next to him.

“I’m thinking about killing off the main character to my novel,” Arthur says this night.

Alfred says, “What’s the title of the book?”

“I’m thinking of calling it _The Day Alfred Jones got Stabbed Because he’s a Sodding Idiot_.”

“I would read it.”

“The main character would be you,” Arthur says, and taps his pen against his chin.

“Would I die a hero?” he asks.

Arthur asks, “Why would you want to die at all?”

“Only if I were the hero. Don’t you think dying a hero would be – I don’t know – heroic?”

“Well, I certainly think it’s better to die a hero than die making dinner for another man. Especially one who got himself stabbed.”

Alfred smiles.

*

Alfred is not Matthew’s actual brother. Matthew is born in Ottawa, Canada on July 1, 1926, and Alfred is born four days later. When Matthew is six years old, his mother leaves the divorce papers on the kitchen counter and takes the first boat she can afford to London, with fake passports and their clothes on their back. There she meets Alfred’s father, who had left his mother four years before.

They meet on a train, with the boy with black Oxford’s and green eyes.

They do not know this, but this boy is Arthur Kirkland, and he is on his way to die.

*

Autumn 1949. Francis greets Antonio like a lover, kissing him on the cheeks with a chewed cigarette between his teeth. He’s pulled away by Matthew before he makes it to Antonio’s mouth. Recently, Francis quit his job, and Matthew gave him the opportunity to be Antonio’s assistant (of sorts), because Antonio looks tired these days.

Arthur apologizes for Francis’ behavior. He only introduces himself as “something of a stranger” when Kiku asks how long he and Alfred have been friends. Kiku’s face blooms red like summer-time poppies, embarrassed. Alfred, personally, is flattered.

*

If asked, Alfred’s favorite season is summer. But Arthur helps him dress in autumn, and in autumn there are thicker fabrics and more layers, so Arthur spends more time swearing at him under his nose rather than from a distance. His wound will take months – maybe years – to heal, though it was shallow. So, he’s got a lot to look forward to in terms of Arthur dressing him. (Or undressing him, he hopes.)

“I find it kind of strange,” he says on an early morning, before Arthur has had his tea and is trying to maneuver Alfred’s feet into the legs of his pants. Arthur makes a grumbling noise. “You know, everyone in the neighborhood is all married in their twenties, young, healthy, and here’s us, completely single. You can’t even cook for yourself.”

“Don’t insult my cooking,” Arthur says.

“And then there’s Mattie and Francis, who live together. And now Francis is working for us. They’re both single, too.”

Arthur finally gets both of Alfred’s legs in his pants, and says, “Francis is hardly single. Unmarried, yes, but not single.”

“Huh,” he says.

“I told you before: Francis is queer like that. I couldn’t imagine him tying himself down. He falls in love too much, with everyone.”

“And you’ll never fall in love?”

Arthur glances up at him. “I sure hope not.”

*

Winter 1949. Arthur wears a black dress shirt and slacks, slimming his figure, making him seem miles long, though his eyes only reach Alfred’s chin. Everything about Arthur is still straight and bland, with no curves or outlines or hips. He stands solid next to Alfred, rubbing Matthew’s shoulder.

The boy who stabbed Alfred has died.

The boy was fifteen years old, with his heart in the wrong place. His mother is a quiet woman and had only wanted what’s best for her son. Her husband holds her as she cries next to her three children, who slouch in their seats, red-eyed and sniffling. The boy’s name was Abel, and the fight he’d been in the week prior to his death had him complaining of constant headaches. He had passed in his sleep.

Arthur whispers to him, “Is that what he looked like when he stabbed you?”

The coffin is closed, and he stares at the monotone picture of Abel pinched between the priest’s fingers. “No,” he says, “he had looked much angrier.”

*

Arthur Kirkland’s first funeral is in the back of a church, he tells Alfred. Arthur is nine years old, and he isn’t sure if it’s his grandmother in the casket, glassy-eyed and motionless, or himself.

Arthur has already died once, and he wishes it wouldn’t happen again.

*

Spring 1950. It happens one day, when Arthur is sipping Earl Grey (three teaspoons of sugar) at Alfred’s desk and reading over his newest manuscript: _The Disappearance of Robert Loore_. Alfred is scrambling eggs when Arthur hooks the base of his porcelain teacup on the nub of a letter and dumps his tea on Alfred’s typewriter. He swears so loudly Alfred comes scampering inside.

“My typewriter!” he exclaims.

“Oops,” Arthur says.

Arthur sits on the bed as Alfred runs over and pokes the keys. Each tap makes a sloshing-squeak noise.

“I’ll get you a new typewriter,” Arthur says.

“No, no,” Alfred sighs, and walks passed Arthur, crouching and pulling out something under the bed. It grinds against the floorboards. “I just liked the paint on that one.”

He replaces the red, tea-drenched typewriter with a rusty turquoise one, and Arthur, for the first time in front of Alfred, laughs.

*

Summer 1951. The surface of Alfred’s wound has healed, and the night of his twenty-fifth birthday, he drags Arthur outside, away from his house, the chatter of Francis’ family and businessmen and acquaintances and neighbors Alfred has never formally met. Arthur’s cursing at him, and their hands are becoming clammy in July’s heady air. Down the road, there’s a bench underneath the canopy of too-green trees, dark and hidden from the white-picket fences and any eyes.

He sits, and Arthur stands with his arms crossed when Alfred pats next to him.

Arthur’s got this strange look. It doesn’t have to do with his green eyes or choppy hair and broad shoulders unproportionate to the rest of him. His nose is wrinkled, more than usual, and his knobby fingers are fumbling with the cotton of his shirt. The top two buttons are undone.

“Come on.” Alfred smiles. “Sit. We’re having a talk.”

“I think our definitions of ‘having a talk’ are very different,” Arthur says, yet he sits. Their legs are pressed together, and it’s making Alfred feel much sticker with sweat.

“I’m a bit tipsy,” Alfred says, and laughs, carding a hand through his damp hair. There had been a lot – too many – people in his house, talking, moving, laughing, always bustling with something. Alfred doesn’t mind it; he’s needed to talk to more people. Arthur isn’t comfortable with crowds, though. It shows clearly on his face when others aren’t looking.

Arthur sways a bit, with alcohol or the heat, he isn’t sure. Alfred sets his palm on Arthur’s thigh, and they sit, quiet, for a few minutes, listening to the party down the street hum through the air. Alfred’s buzzing with energy yet is calm and warm, and Arthur breathes deeply.

“I think it could work,” Alfred says, finally, because the silence is too loud.

Arthur says (and there’s a sigh in there, somewhere, that reaches Alfred’s ears), “What could?”

“This.” Because their close, and not close enough. There’s that wide path between them that has stayed thin and breakable at any moment. It’s always there, and Alfred wants to smudge it away.

Arthur leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He’s hesitant before scrubbing at his eyes. He seems particularly unwilling to curse today. “I don’t know, Alfred,” he says, voice muffled by his palms. “I thought I knew, but I don’t.”

“Tell me…” Alfred ponders for a moment. “Tell me why it wouldn’t work.”

Arthur’s face is becoming a ruddy red, at his ears and his collar. “I don’t know, Alfred.”

“You’re not a man who admits he doesn’t know.” Alfred is sure of this. “So, at least humor me.”

Arthur keeps his face covered, and Alfred realizes the flush isn’t from embarrassment, or the alcohol.

“I’m not a man you want to be close to,” Arthur says, and it’s sad, to Alfred, and so pretty at the same time; the words are still in Arthur’s hands.

“Well, we can see then,” Alfred says.

Again, they become quiet. Soon, Arthur lays his hand on Alfred’s.

*

Arthur Kirkland has the guilty conscience of a never-ending wildfire. Always burning, flames always licking and clawing at the trees. But the trees don’t burn or sizzle or die, they continue to grow, and smoke coats the sky like an afternoon spent alongside gunpowder and canons.

Eren should not have given him money to flee, and his grandmother should not have been squealed over by tires to pull Arthur away from the road. Arthur Kirkland should have died at the hands of a bomb that September day on the train, and he should have died by the steering of a drunk driver.

When Alfred says, “I hope no one wears black at my funeral”, there’s still that lingering thought that Alfred should be dead by now. Matthew and Francis and Kiku and Antonio, their families and distant families. Because everywhere he goes, everyone he becomes close to, death follows.

Arthur doesn’t tell Alfred this for a very, very long time.

*

Nothing changes. Days still roll on, months, years. And they’re still breathing, and Arthur still curses at Francis, is still polite, and Alfred busies himself in the funeral home with Kiku and taps at his typewriter until he’s exhausted and smelling smoke. Arthur sits by, scrawling out his words or falling asleep with his wiry hair tucked into Alfred’s pillow.

(He knows this is right.)


End file.
